The Wireless Local Area Network (LAN) split-plane architecture involves creation of tunnels between pairs of switches or between Access Points (APs) and switches. A single switch may terminate hundreds of tunnels. Certain types of tunnels, for example Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) tunnels, utilize a “keep-alive” (also referred to herein as a “heartbeat”) mechanism that monitors tunnel reachability and availability. Typically, a keep-alive packet is transmitted every second on each tunnel. If a heartbeat packet is not received for a predetermined period of time or if a response to a heartbeat tunnel is not received within a predetermined period of time, the tunnel end-point or the tunnel itself are assumed to be non-functional and the tunnel is torn down to free up bandwidth. While the presently described mechanism for efficiently transmitting a large number of tunnel keep-alive messages is described with respect to a WLAN, the concepts apply equally well to other tunneling protocols that incorporate a heartbeat/keep-alive mechanism.